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robininthelabyrinth · 7 years ago

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Countless Roads - Chapter 39

Fic: Countless Roads - Chapter 39 - Ao3

Fandom: Flash, Legends Pairing: Gen, Mick Rory/Leonard Snart, others

Summary: Due to a family curse (which some call a gift), Leonard Snart has more life than he knows what to do with – and that gives him the ability to see, speak to, and even share with the various ghosts that are always surrounding him.

Sure, said curse also means he’s going to die sooner rather than later, just like his mother, but in the meantime Len has no intention of letting superheroes, time travelers, a surprisingly charming pyromaniac, and a lot of ghosts get in the way of him having a nice, successful career as a professional thief.

———————————————————————————

"But you're not," the kid – his name was Jax, apparently – says for the fifth time, sounding increasingly frantic. "You're not a necromancer, boss. That was always important. Not a necromancer. Don’t you remember?"

"You seem to have trouble accepting reality," Len observes dispassionately. He's slouched back against one of the consoles, watching his ghosts explore the ship for details. They found an instruction manual a few minutes ago; Barry is speed-reading it now. Soon, Len won't have any need to keep the crew alive.

He wonders if they realize that.

His poltergeists are keeping them bound to their seats, arms tightly pressed to their sides, but Len has no particular problem letting them whisper conspiracies and plans on how to escape their situation to each other in the meantime. It won't help them, of course; nothing will help them, in the end. The ship will soon be Len’s, and he will be able to return home to the empire of dust and ruin he’s slowly building.

"My reality is fine; yours, on the other hand, I ain't too sure about," Jax shoots back. He hasn't been whispering; he persists in trying to talk to Len, instead. He's combative without being disrespectful.

And he already calls Len boss.

"I will have to keep you when you're gone," Len muses.

The grey-haired academic – Grey, Jax calls him, though the others call him Stein - bristles and tries to move forward protectively before Len’s ghosts pull him back. "Gone? What does that mean? Surely you don't intend to murder us wholesale, Mr. Snart."

"No," Len says, and sees all of them but the revenant relax until he adds, "Not till I confirm that I can run the ship without your living assistance, anyway."

"So - that means - you are intending on killing us," the tall man – Ray? – says, sounding a little blank. Maybe a little betrayed.

"Oh, yes," Len says. "More grist to my mill, most of you. Your lives will serve to empower my other ghosts, and you yourselves will join my legions as servitors. Except you, Jax. You can be a lieutenant."

"Oh goody," Jax says. "Just what I've always wanted to be - a dead lieutenant."

"I can't guarantee control of you otherwise," Len points out, almost amused. Almost. Close enough for him, nowadays; it’s as close as he comes to what he vaguely recalls as that emotion.

"You could just trust me," Jax says. He sounds hurt, the little puppy. “Ever think of that?"

"No,” Len says honestly. “The living are by nature liars."

"Mick isn't," the bird-woman, Kendra, says. She'd nearly escaped when she'd pulled out those wings; it had rather shocked the ghosts. But she was still no match for a speedster ghost, with all the power of Len's favorite poltergeist enforcers behind him. "Mick was always honest, and you trusted him. Don’t you remember?"

"I keep telling you, I don't know who this 'Mick' guy is," Len says.

"He's your partner," the revenant says. "And we made a terrible mistake, and changed the timeline, and took him from you."

Something is wrong.

Something is missing.

Len turns to her with a frown, as do some of her colleagues.

"What are you talking about?" Ray asks.

"I’ve figured out what happened," the revenant says grimly. "Jax, was Mick alive when we met him?"

"Nah," Jax replies. "He was a ghost.”

“He was?” Kendra asks.

“Yeah. That’s why he was always coming along on dangerous missions and stuff, since he knew he couldn’t die twice."

"He was originally from the 1930s, I believe he said once," Grey adds, nodding in agreement.

The revenant nods. "Yeah, well, the rest of us didn't know that, and that's how we made the mistake," she says, making a face. "Remember the last mission, guys? Chasing after the Pilgrim? We saved Mick Rory from dying in a fire with his family. A fire he probably didn't survive the first time around."

“Aw, shit,” Jax says, understanding. “No death, no ghost. No ghost, no Len meeting that ghost at juvie. No meeting, no partnership…”

"So, wait, you’re saying that having the younger Mick in our cargo bay..." Ray says, eyes going wide.

"...is why Snart is acting like this," the captain concludes, scowling. “It’s a massive time aberration, and we’re the ones that caused it.”

“Gideon told us she hadn’t been able to track the temporal anomaly involved in the Pilgrim’s actions,” Kendra says with a groan, knocking her head back against her chair. “Remember? That’s because there wasn’t any. If the Pilgrim had killed him, nothing would’ve changed.”

“But surely you should have noticed that you were in the wrong era!” Grey exclaims. “Perhaps you did not have the insight that Jefferson and I did as to Mr. Rory’s state of being, so to speak – and we were in the medical bay as a result of the Pilgrim’s ear;oer actions, of course – but surely being in the 1930s…”

“The clothing looked about the same,” the revenant says defensively. “It was a farm, okay? I don’t know anything about farms or farmers, we just landed in a field and saw a house on fire and the Pilgrim walking up there aiming a gun at some teenager who was asleep on the couch and we saved his life, okay? We're heroes, it's what we do. It was totally reasonable.”

“Shouldn’t Gideon have said something, though?”

“We didn’t wait for Gideon,” Ray says ruefully. “We just followed the Pilgrim’s ship, remember? We didn’t even have time enough to check what year we were going to!”

“Clearly, we should have,” the captain says. “Thought obviously it would have helped if we knew about Mr. Rory’s…ah…living status before this had all happened –”

“How did you not know about it?” Jax shoots back. “You’re the Time Master! Mr. From the Future guy! And hey, while we're at it, how is it that you don’t believe in ghosts, but you know about necromancers?”

“Necromancers and mediums are a specific type of magic user known to the Time Masters, albeit fairly rare ones, and ones I have never encountered before,” the captain says stiffly. “They utilize magical projections and summonings which they refer to as ‘ghosts’ –”

“And it never occurred to you those might, y’know, be real ghosts?”

“Most necromancers don’t exactly use them as sentient beings, Mr. Jackson –”

“We’re getting away from the point here,” the revenant interjects. “Namely the fact that we are being held down by ghosts commanded by a necromancer version of Leonard because we saved Mick’s life –”

Len watches them bicker, his eyes flickering between them as he follows along in the conversation. He probably ought to be concerned or something. They are talking about him, after all, and about someone who they believe meant something to him.

Someone who they apparently stole from him.

Someone who – if what they’re saying is true – is in the cargo bay right now.

Len’s –

Len’s not sure what to do about that.

It seems to require feeling something. He’s not too good at that these days.

Barry appears in front of Len, much to Len’s relief. "We need a palm-print to open the next room," he says without fanfare. He's learned that Len prefers directness.

"From?"

"Any of the crew,” Barry says, then adds, preempting Len’s next question, “Living; there are automatic protections against the dead. Or at least, there are against corpses, anyway; I guess the palm-print might theoretically still work if you empowered someone all the way back to full solidity."

Like Len would ever do that. Why waste the effort?

"There are protections against unwillingness, too," the captain says. Rip Hunter, he'd introduced himself as; he’s been chief of the whisperers and the least cooperative. It was his fault they were floating dead in the timeline; once he realized the scope of Len’s power, he tried to activate a shutdown of the whole ship through pre-planted keywords, forcing Barry to rip the interior computer controls out with his hands to make it stop. That, in turn, had messed up the process of getting control over the Gideon system. They'd been obligated to wait in the time stream until the time wraiths could bring over some of the more technically inclined of Len's victims.

Len does prefer to use his own victims, really, whenever possible. He hadn't learned much from his father, whose spirit Len had very much enjoyed pulling out of the man's corpse and having his other ghosts rip apart, slowly, over the course of a week, but he had learned this much: the personal touch is always better.

They fear you more, that way.

Cisco Ramon – the one referenced by Jax earlier – turned out to be another victim of Len's elimination of STAR Labs, one that Len hadn't paid much mind too before. Clearly a mistake: it turned out he was a very skilled mechanic and, according to Barry, would be of great value in repairing even a ship from the future.

And so Len called, and so Len waited. He’s here now, Ramon; he's elbow deep in the ship's guts, learning her. Deactivating any other trigger words.

Very useful. Len will have to promote him to the inner circle if he continues to be this useful.

Rip Hunter is still speaking.

" – as you see, you have no choice but to negotiate with us if you wish to regain control of the ship. Gideon's sensors, even – even brutalized, as you have done, will not permit you to use a hand of a person who doesn't want it used."

"So, according to you, wanting not to use it is important," Len says. "An unconscious person might do the trick."

Hunter's eyes flicker. He probably hadn't thought of that. "Feel free to try it," he says arrogantly. A bluff, if Len had to wager.

Luckily, he doesn't.

"Sara Lance," he says, based on the name that the others have been calling her. Names have power. "You will unlock it for me."

The revenant laughs a little, sounding incredulous. "Me? You think you can trick or force me into opening it for you? I hate to break it to you, but you've got the wrong girl."

"I don't think I do," Len says. "Release her."

The ghosts let her go.

She immediately leaps to her feet, adopting a fighting position, but before she can even finish the gesture, Len bends his will upon her and says, his voice echoing full with his power, "Stop."

She stops.

And then she looks surprised at herself, and tries to move, struggling with ever more horror at her body's failure to obey her.

"You may speak," Len says. He never liked gags. His dad –

He’s not thinking about that.

"How are you doing this?!" she spits immediately.

"Do you really not know?" Len asks. "Surely you must have felt drawn to me from the beginning."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"You're a revenant. You were once dead, your spirit free, and then you were called back and bound within your body by a medium," Len tells her. His voice is as cold and smooth as ice, just as it always is; he can see that the unemotional recitation disturbs her and mildly regrets that it does, but he can't change it. There's no fire that heats his blood.

Not anymore.

"So what?" she says, but there is fear in her voice. She understands, even though she doesn’t want to.

"You are a ghost in a living body," Len says. "There are spaces between you and your body, spaces that come from death. Spaces that you can only fill by violence or shedding of blood, or sex, or food, or some other vice. Which is yours?"

She's gone still.

"Answer." He doesn’t put power behind it, but she answers anyway.

"The bloodlust," she whispers.

"Quite typical," Len says. "You need not be distressed. The vampire myth had to come from somewhere."

“Yeah, you've mentioned that before," she says with a sneer, trying to cover her distress with bravado and not entirely succeeding. "People like me being vampires and werewolves –”

“People like you inspired the vampire and werewolf myths," Len corrects her. "If it’s any consolation, the medium who brought you back did a better than average job; you’ve got a lot less spaces left in you than others I've seen. Tell me his name."

"What, so you can go kill him and force him to join your undead armies?"

"Firstly, my armies are dead, not undead. And secondly, no, probably not. His powers may require him to be alive," Len says regretfully. He learned that through his experiences with other mediums. "Blood is such a popular device for that sort of person."

He wrinkles his nose, disapproving.

"Whereas you just prefer outright murder."

"I don't prefer anything," Len says truthfully. "But death and control of ghosts is the most efficient approach. People don't object to orders that way."

“Sure, I bet that's what you tell yourself,” she sneers. She’s lashing out to cover her fear. It’s fine. Less streamlined than he might like, less efficient, but he doesn’t mind the delay too much. He’s in no rush: he’s got nothing to look forward to, after all. “The necromancer who walks, trailed by the ghosts of his victims – cold and heartless – that’s just what’s efficient.”

“It is,” Len says, and stands. “Come along; I apparently require your palm-print.”

Len wants to get away from the crew before they talk any more about this – Mick. The suggestion that he had a partner, that there was someone close to him, someone he misses; it disturbs him. Deeply.

He doesn’t like that thought.

Why would he ever make himself so vulnerable to another person? Does that mean that – what happened all those years ago - with Lisa –

No.

He’s not thinking about that.

He never thinks about that.

“You realize this means we have to put the young Mr. Rory back if we are to repair the timeline,” he hears the old one who is called Grey say to the others as he walks out of the room.

“We can’t!” Ray exclaims. “He’s a teenager! If we put him back, he’ll die!”

“We clearly have no choice,” Rip says.

“You’re hardly a good judge, you always default to child murder,” the bird-woman snaps. “Remember Kasnia?”

“Miss Saunders, my best intentions to save the world aside, I likely wouldn’t have been able to actually carry it out –”

Len is very grateful when the door slides shut behind him and cuts them off.

“Are they always so – well, like that?” he asks the revenant. No, Sara. He should be gracious and refer to her by name, if she is to work with him.

He always tries to know them by name.

Especially his victims.

Sara looks amused despite herself. “Yes, they are,” she says. “You were part of our crew, once, you know.”

“That seems unlikely.”

Though theoretically, if true, his own palm-print would work on the door. He wonders if she realizes that she’s rendered herself useless with her little revelation – assuming that he believes her.

Which he doesn’t.

He can’t believe her, because if that part’s correct, then perhaps the other part –

No.

“Do you know how time aberrations work?” she persists. “The timeline is unsettled, for now. If we put it right, you’ll be back the way you were. With a partner you trust. A partner you love. That must be appealing to you, right? Having someone you love and trust?”

Len feels his lips turn up in what is really not a smile. “You’re taking the wrong approach.”

“Why’s that?”

“Nothing appeals to me anymore. Certainly not emotions.”

She frowns. She doesn’t understand.

“I’m a necromancer,” Len tells her gently. “I command the unwilling dead. And more than that, I committed the greatest of all crimes: I took one of the dead from the black book of God and returned her to life. And though I do not regret doing it, I suffer for it.”

“I don’t understand,” Sara says. “What – what do you mean?”

Len shakes his head. There’s no point in explaining it.

In explaining any of it.

He doubts anyone could understand.

The wrenching pain that shattered his heart when his father, enraged beyond reason, brought the bottle down on Lisa’s head, again and again and again, until there was nothing but a smear of blood and blonde hair that never got the chance to fade to brown; pain which never fades.

His father’s bellowing rage going quiet in Len’s ears; sound which has never returned.

The feeling of joy, lost; the feeling of anything muted.

He only knows what he feels because he remembers the sensation from before. And even those sensations are limited: things amuse him, or annoy him, and sometimes even disturb him, but he hasn’t felt anything stronger since the day he took the easy route out of the pain that is his sole companion now.

He couldn’t even feel joy at the sight of Lisa, returned to him, rising up from the dead – not merely a ghost, no, but alive. Alive, yes, but repulsed by him, by his actions, by how he robbed her of her freedom to pass on, as all dead longed to do.

He has hope that she might forgive him for what he’s done one day, but he will never know. That which he takes from God is not his to keep.

He remembers the way everything he loved began to die at the moment that she began to live.

His friends, his livelihood, his city.

He remembers not being able to care enough to act, or to stop himself from lashing out in ruinous destruction, but still enough – just enough – to be able to suffer from it.

The worst thing you can do is also the easiest, his mother had told him. Let me tell you how to make the dead dance on this earth again. But, my son: this you must never do!

But he did.

And he pays and he pays and he pays, endless payment, payment in a heart made of ice and stone, payment in cruelty he cannot stop himself from meting out, payment in days that go on and on, filled with nothingness, without end – without even hope of end.

For him, after all, even death is no longer an avenue of escape.

Len cannot cut off his own life anymore, artificially prolonged by his curse so that he might truly learn the meaning of suffering; he must wait for someone else to do it. And so now he builds himself a monument of ruin, his armies of the dead a creeping sickness on the cities he once so loved, posing them as a challenge to the world: if you dare, come here and stop me.

Please.

Please, stop me.

“Here’s the door,” Cisco says, pointing.

Len nods at Sara, who scowls.

“Do it yourself, or I’ll order you to,” Len says mildly.

She puts her palm on the scanner.

Look at that, coercion still works just fine.

“You should tell Rip that his fantastic plans need a bit of trouble-shooting,” Len says dryly.

“It’s creepy how much you still sound like you,” Sara says. “Except you managed not to make a ‘get it? shooting? because he carries a six-shooter?’ joke at the end of it.”

“That’s funny,” Len observes. “I like that.”

“Great,” Sara mutters. “Maybe I’ll also get to be a lieutenant in your Army of the Dead. Yippee.”

“Not with an attitude like that you won’t,” Len lies. He kind of likes the attitude.

“Great, that’s one of the last few pieces we needed,” Cisco says. He’s very perky. Len slides him a bit more power as a reward, which makes him glow. Yes, very perky. Maybe he should assign him to Lisa’s defense squad; she might like him. That’s far more important than his mechanical skills could ever be. “We’ll be able to get the ship up and running momentarily.”

“Good,” Len says. “I don’t like the time stream.”

One of the time wraiths whines, a choking half-scream half-hiss that sounds like a machine. Of course it likes the time stream.

“It separates me from the dead,” Len tells it, feeling for some reason reminded of a puppy. He’s not sure why; he’s never had that thought before. “I need to be back on Earth, where my armies are.”

“Activating now,” Barry says.

The ship shudders back to life.

And an alarm promptly goes off.

Len sighs and lifts a hand to tell them to turn the ship back off. One of Rip Hunter’s tricks, no doubt – he’ll give it to the man, he’s certainly persistent –

“No, wait!” Sara exclaims, grabbing at Len’s arm. “That’s the time aberration alarm.”

“So?”

“So, someone might be in danger!”

“And I care because…?”

“It might be you,” she says. "Maybe it's your younger self, about to get killed."

Len frowns. He doesn’t really much care if anything happens to him, but the ghosts around him are looking worried.

He wishes he knew why.

“Fine,” he says shortly. There’s no harm in giving in on this matter, after all; she did provide the palm-print he requested. “Gideon, report on the time aberration.”

“The Pilgrim is targeting Leonard Snart at age 17,” Gideon’s mechanical voice, stripped of all emotion, says. “Central City. 1629 Handley Avenue.”

Len can feel his brow furrowing. Handley Avenue. That’s where he grew up.

His father’s old house.

Where Lisa lived.

“We go there now,” he says, and his voice is cold, cold, cold, so cold that even the ghosts flinch away, that Sara instinctively takes a step back, and Len turns on his heel and goes back to the bridge.

Sara and the ghosts follow behind him.

“Is he always like that?” he hears her ask.

“It’s always cold when he looks at you,” Barry tells her in return. “Always.”

“Always?”

“He’s a necromancer,” Cisco says. “He’ll die when someone kills him, and then his spirit will be ripped apart by his own ghosts, and only then will we be free. That’s kinda the way it works.”

“Holy crap,” Sara says. “That’s – awful.”

Len waits for the door to the bridge to slide open, then strides in.

“Tell me about this Pilgrim,” he says.

“She is the Time Masters’ most deadly assassin,” Rip replies promptly. Perhaps he hopes that Len will take pity on his mission. “Her specialization is what the Time Masters call the Omega Protocols – the destruction of an individual’s younger self in order to ensure that they do not live long enough to cause trouble. She’s smart, ruthless, powerful –”

“Enough adjectives. What are her weapons?”

“She’s got a temporal micro-manipulator,” Ray says. “It slows down time in her immediate area. She can use it to stop my lasers, or Firestorm’s flames, or even your cold gun.” He pauses. “Do you still have a cold gun?”

Len vaguely recalls Barry mentioning some temperature-themed weapons that had been stolen from STAR Labs before Len had taken it over. That would have worked quite well with a ‘cold’ persona, if he’d been interested in doing something like that.

“I don’t need a gun,” Len reminds Ray.

Might be cool, though.

Heh.

Cool.

Because it’s a cold gun.

Sometimes Len wishes he had someone to tell these stupid puns to.

Every time he tries to tell it to one of his ghosts, that part of him in his chest – the old him, the one from before, the one who can do nothing but suffer – screams in agony that he can almost hear; Len’s not sure whether it’s because it’s mean to impose puns on unwilling victims or if he’s remembering what it was like to have real friends, but he avoids it regardless.

He has to cut himself off from those feelings, or else he’d never get anything done.

“She’s trained with multiple forms of weaponry and close combat,” Sara volunteers. Helpful revenant; yes, Len will definitely have to keep her, too. “We’ve seen her use handguns, laser guns – she fought me with improvised weaponry, like chair legs and police batons.”

“How familiar is she with ghosts?” Len asks.

“Not at all,” Rip says. “Like most Time Masters, she likely doesn’t believe they exist.”

“Good,” Len says. He looks them over. “I’d like a few of you to come with me to make sure I identify the right person. Which of you would be able to identify her without stabbing me in the back?”

“If you’re gonna kill us to be sure about that, none of us,” Jax says.

Len rolls his eyes. “I’ve already made clear that I’m not killing you until I know I can run this ship without you. You’ll be under guard by ghosts, but you’ll be alive.”

“We all can identify her,” Ray says.

“Fine. You, Jax, and Sara will do,” Len says, nodding at the ghosts holding them down to release them. “Come along by your own free will. If you don’t want to, you’ll be dragged. It doesn’t matter to me which you select.”

They come with him, but the expressions on their faces are mulish.

Not good with authority. Len’s okay with that.

“Why us?” Ray asks.

“Because Rip and Kendra are more likely to stab me in the back on principle,” Len replies.

“You know I’m usually sent out with Grey when there’s a fight brewing, right?” Jax says. “We bond together to become Firestorm. It’s a whole thing. By myself I’m just a high school quarterback with a torn ACL.”

“And I don’t even have my suit,” Ray adds.

“Given that all I need from you is your eyes and your brain,” Len says, “I’m sure you’ll both do fine.”

They look surprised. “You don’t want us to fight?” Sara asks.

“Why would I?” Len says, waiting for the Waverider to land and the door to open, which it does with a hiss of pressure.

Handley Avenue awaits.

Len remembers this street. He’s pretty sure that in his time, it’s been completely demolished, except for the corner store with the ice cream that his grandfather used to deliver. After Len’s grandfather died, the owner would look the other way when Len was stealing food for Lisa.

Len had given the owner and his family a free escort out of Central City, with a warning that Len was only inclined to give get out of jail cards once.

He steps out into the warm summer air.

He breathes in the scents of his childhood: the smell of concrete and asphalt, grass and dirt smudged on lawns that barely deserved the name, the sticky smell of drying paint.

And as he exhales, his power goes out, too, and the ghosts come to his call.

Friendly, unfriendly, it doesn’t matter; he is powerful enough not to care.

He is empty enough not to care.

They come and they come and they come, until Len’s armies surround him, strong but unseen.

“Report,” he says.

“A woman is approaching the house from the back,” one ghost says. “And four men are leaving through the front – Family men, Don Tomio and his sons, and a local man, an enforcer.”

Len nods, recalling the instance. Don Tomio’s son had taken a swipe at him, and Len had recoiled, and he’d gotten a bottle bashed over his head in the meantime. He’d lain there for hours, bleeding on the flood, while his father took the Family representatives elsewhere – hours and hours, until Lisa came home and found him on the ground. She called the ambulance and saved his life.

The hospital got the glass out, but it had been too long to heal properly: the scars remained, and the flesh on his head pulled a little every time he smiled.

Luckily he doesn’t smile too much anymore.

He glances at the trio of the living.

“The woman,” Ray says. “That’s probably her.”

They avoid the men in the front and go to the back. The Pilgrim is dressed in skintight vinyl, with leather straps, looking like –

“Trinity from the Matrix?” Len asks. “Really?”

“So creepy how just like him you are,” Sara mutters. “So creepy.”

Len ignores her and walks forward, leaving the others behind.

She smirks when she sees him.

“Are you here to stop me from killing your younger self?” she asks. “By yourself? Really?”

Len looks at her. She looks cruel.

“Why do you want to kill me?” he asks.

“My orders –” she starts.

“You don’t need to follow them,” Len says. “‘I was just following orders’ is no excuse.”

Except for his servants, of course.

She scoffs and lifts a futuristic-looking gun, pointing it at him. “I’ll enjoy this,” she says conversationally. “I’ll kill you now, and then I’ll kill your younger self, too.”

“Even though I would be no further threat after the first murder?” Len inquires.

“Just for fun,” she confirms.

“Good to know,” Len says. “I always enjoy killing the cruel most.”

At least, he thinks he does.

She’s about to laugh at him, he thinks, when his ghosts descend upon her.

The battle is short and anti-climactic, at least to him, who knew the outcome from the first moment battle was joined.

The Pilgrim takes a little longer to catch on.

She fires wildly at them, which they solidify to catch in their bodies to avoid collateral damage from her bullets hitting anyone else; they are dead, after all, and it doesn’t hurt them as much as it would the living. She wield some sort of device to slow them down, but more approach from other directions.

She spins, slowly, on one foot, freezing them all –

And the ghostly hands of a poltergeist reach up from the earth to rip her apart at the knees.

A ghostly hand clamps over her mouth as she tries to scream, ghostly hands catch her as she falls, the ghosts move again as the temporal micro-manipulation device fails, yanked off of her, still clutched in her glove - with the hand inside of it still intact.

And then the ghosts are too many for Len to see what happens next.

No matter. He knows.

“Holy crap,” Sara says.

“Suddenly I get why he never uses ghosts for shit like that,” Jax says, sounding ill. “Or didn’t, anyway.”

There’s a noise from the house.

1629 Handley Avenue. His father’s house.

Len frowns and turns.

“Get out of here,” a ghost bellows, standing outside the back yard. One of Len’s, yes, by right all the dead are his, and yet also not one of his. This ghost, he’s strong. Amazingly strong, incredibly strong – he’s so strong, he’s practically shining to Len’s eyes. He’s rich with the warmth of life.

Len hasn’t been warm in so long.

“Get away, all of you!” the ghost continues, looking panicked. He keeps glancing behind him. “Lisa, dial the number already! We need to get the ambulance before any of these ghosts come any closer!”

This ghost knows Lisa.

This ghost –

“Is that Mick?” Ray asks.

“It’s gotta be,” Jax says. “The timeline’s twisted enough to change Len’s memories, but it hasn’t actually settled yet, so Mick hasn’t totally disappeared.”

“Yeah, he looks just like the one we pulled out of the burning house back in the ‘30s,” Sara says.

This ghost is at his house. He shines with Len’s life, life from long ago – life from before Len became what he is now, when his power was still warm, not cold.

This ghost talks to Lisa. He knows Lisa, and Lisa knows him.

Len feels it again, that pang, deep in his chest. That feeling of emptiness. That sense of wrongness.

Something is missing.

Could it be that the crew was telling the truth about their terrible mistake, about removing someone from the timeline and robbing Len of his presence?

Could this man, this ghost, really be Len’s partner?

No.

Surely –

It's impossible.

It has to be impossible.

If Len had a partner, someone he loved and trusted, he might have something to live for: something that would make him think twice about doing something terrible, something foolish, something permanent, and Len can’t risk that.

Len can’t risk not being there for Lisa when she needs him. Len can’t risk not having done what he needed to do. Len can’t have let this man, this ghost, substitute for what really matters. For Lisa, for Lisa's life. And more than that -

Len can’t risk starting to feel again.

He can’t.

Because if he did, he’d have to actually feel everything he’s done. Everything he’s lost. All that suffering, returned seven-fold, climbing into his brain, paralyzing him.

No!

But something is still missing.

Sara said, earlier, and Jax repeated it now, that the timeline hadn’t set yet. That there was still an opportunity to return the teenage boy back to his original death, to make sure that his ghost would be there, eventually, ready for Len to meet. Ready to change Len’s life.

Ready to make Len human again. To make him feel everything he's been insulated from feeling.

Len grits his teeth.

He can’t permit that to happen.

If the timeline will not do its duty and eliminate this ghost from Len’s timeline, then Len will do it himself.

He gathers his power, thick in his chest, and he reaches out –

#dccoldwave #mick rory #leonard snart #Jefferson Jax Jackson #sara lance #Kendra Saunders #Ray Palmer #martin stein #rip hunter #deadfic #my fic

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